Beloved Students:

May the goodness of your precious heart bloom fully, and may you recognize and harvest the flowers of compassion and wisdom as you continue your journey into light. May your heart know abundance, and may that abundance cover the Earth with a precious blanket of flowers. As each of you continues deepening your understanding of living abundantly, may the pure river of your soul quench all your spiritual thirst, and overflow into the stream of your beingness. May kindness go before you, behind you and beside you; and may it touch each sentient being it is your privilege to experience along the way.

As always, it is good to begin this month asking self: “What am I learning?” But do not stop with only this question. Go even deeper and ask: “How am I demonstrating the wealth I have gleaned in my spiritual journey?” Indeed, this is the real question, isn’t it? Clearly, it is one thing to know something and quite another thing to live it.

One of the interesting complications of the development of consciousness in your time has to do with the experiential split between knowing and actualizing. Indeed, spiritual mastery comes through the actualization of spiritual principles and cosmic truths. Thus, bringing forth the “master within” mandates that you transcend this precarious split.

I have long noticed that many of my students become frustrated with themselves when they become aware of incidents in their lives where they “let themselves down,” so to speak, by thinking, speaking or acting in ways that are inharmonious with what they know they are capable of. For example, perhaps a situation at home or at work produces a moment of anger, and in the immediacy of that anger, one says or does something not in alignment with his/her true nature. In the moment, it may seem there is no other option. But later, s/he reflects on the incident and feels remorse for not having been the self they know s/he could have been. It may seem that even the knowledge that anger accomplishes nothing is rendered helpless in the actual arising of anger. The presence of that anger has the greater power in terms of creating the outcome of specific events in one’s life.

In truth, while most of you really want to bring forth that internal master, the reason it doesn’t seem to happen is two-fold. In the first place, many people think that the internal master just suddenly appears one day, and sort of “takes over” in the living of life. Clearly such is a naive notion, since actualization requires energy, focus and, of course, considerable effort. But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the most significant impediment to actualization is the old, familiar, even seductive friend - Resistance.

The most unfortunate thing about resistance, of course, is that for the most part, it remains beneath the conscious level, arising in moments of the playing out of those old repeating patterns. But if one ruthlessly scrutinizes the mind, the presence of resistance can easily be felt in the areas where one experiences personal blocks. For those less aware spiritually speaking, resistance may go completely undetected throughout an entire life; for it does take a profound willingness to see beyond the obvious to decipher both the presence of resistance and its wide-ranging effects in one’s life.

To begin dissolving resistance, one may first consider the areas wherein one experiences fear. Everyone who has fear also has resistance to facing and transcending that fear - otherwise, s/he would not experience the fear. If you are serious about dissolving resistance, you might start by writing out the areas in your life where you experience fear. Forget about the areas that arise from fright (such as being afraid of snakes, bears or mountain lions). Delve into the less substantive areas of fear, such as fear of exposure (you alone can add the “to what” part), or fear of rejection (you add the “by whom” part), or fear of failure or fear of success, etc. Then, continue the exercise by next asking the question (and writing out whatever the mind gives you as an answer): “How do I avoid facing this fear?” Then ask, “How is my avoidance pattern related to my resistance to exploring and mastering this fear?”

Some of you are likely to experience “butterflies in your stomach” at just reading this assignment. That should tell you something! Let your imagination run wild, if you will, for the sake of the exercise, but watch it closely. After all, it is running wild most of the time anyway - that’s why you experience avoidance and resistance. The difference is that in the exercise, you become conscious by watching the mind of what may for lifetimes have been an unconscious process. Let your imagination show you how it (via ego mind) literally controls you by the “jerking of your chain” through fear.

If a particular brand of resistance has been with you for lifetimes, you have probably learned to accept it as a natural response to something in life. In fact, most people actually think their resistance is protecting them from something – usually whatever they fear. However, if you study Nature, you can easily see that resistance in the way most humans apply it is not natural at all. What if those great trees had resistance to standing tall and being seen? What if they let that resistance thwart their natural growth and beauty? While this may sound preposterous, it is exactly what most humans do with their own resistance-laden psyches.

Or, what if a great river so feared rejection that it would/could not flow into the ocean? Again, in the natural world, this sounds preposterous. Is such any less preposterous in your own creative journey? While it is clear that trees and rivers do not suffer self-doubt, as do humans, they can, perhaps, teach something about the perceived need for self-doubt to which so many humans cling. Self-doubt is one of the less-than-favorable attributes that arise from self-consciousness – which, as you learn from the recorded teaching for this month, is nothing but a fear of the projections of others. But since you have no control over the projections of others, it is really counterproductive to fear them. In truth, your mastery requires that you rise above the personality, for it is only the personality (surely not the soul) that fears and doubts and, consequently, projects accordingly.

Of course, it should go without saying that to do this kind of personal growth work, you must learn to be kind to yourself. That being said it is important to recognize the difference in being kind to yourself and in being self-indulgent. Can you be kind enough to yourself to give up the TV, the workaholism, and/or all the other diversions you use to support your resistance? Of course, the first step is to recognize how you use those diversions to protect your resistance. While looking this deeply may be somewhat painful at first, in truth it is the only way out of the prison in which your resistance has bound you. Do not expect your internal master to suddenly arise simply because you know s/he is within you. Rather, dedicate your process of deep personal discovery to that master. In so doing, you also earn the privilege of reinventing what it means to be kind to yourself.

Kindness implies a high level of respect and a profound recognition of the ultimate nature of reality. That ultimate nature, of course is what you call “the Oneness.” If you are not separate from the trees and the rivers, you can “borrow” from their wisdom. For in truth, it is your own (whether or not you have as yet seen this as so). But likewise, if you understand the true nature of everything, you can see yourself as me – or as any other spiritual teacher – and draw from the wisdom we have generated in our collective physical sojourns. If you perceive me as kind and generous, then you (by looking through my eyes) can be equally kind and generous. The only thing that prevents your so seeing is your resistance to seeing in this way.

Please join me this month in listening to A Fireside Chat, a talk I generated for you just yesterday. Ultimately, if the world is to become a kinder place, it will be because you have learned to see it as a kinder place. If all my students could come together and model this kind of seeing, the possibilities for transformation on planet Earth would be enormous! Of course, such planetary transformation can arise only within the transformation each of you creates in your own experiential flow as agents of the Divine. Be kind enough to yourself to allow your own mind to be transformed not only by your own kindness, but by the kindness others before you have anchored into the creative process of evolution as well.

Djwhal Khul